In my last post I mentioned that topping the list of well-known factors used by Google to search and rank websites are:
• Type of content (how relevant the data on the site is to the search terms)
• Quality of content (spell check is used to separate professional sites from amateur wannabes)
• Freshness of content (sites from 1996 are less likely to be returned before sites from 2014)
So it is only common sense that the content of your website is a major factor in successful SEO. In an August 2014 survey by Ascend2, 41% of respondents said that the creation of content is the most challenging obstacle to reaching the next level of Inbound Marketing success.
In the same survey, when asked “What are the most effective tactics used for Inbound Marketing purposes?” 59% said Marketing Content creation. While a close second was Search engine Optimization (SEO) at 54%.
So content creation is both the most important and effective factor in Inbound Marketing, plus the most difficult to produce.
Many marketing professionals are now including the term Content Marketing as a description for Inbound Marketing.
What is online marketing Content?
It is any type of text or video and other media used to inform and entice customers to buy. The objective is to engage visitors with messages and content that create attention.
In addition to your standard site content, such as your home page, the most successful use of content is to give the viewer interesting and useful information that they will find to be engaging and hopefully share with others through social media. This generally should not be about selling your product or service.
One of the quickest and most effective ways to create remarkable and informative content is through Blogging. It is important that your website has a blog. Companies that have a blog enjoy 97% more inbound links and have 43% more indexed pages and have far greater leads than those that do not Blog.
Business websites that Blog have 55% more website visitors and 70% more leads. So let’s take a closer look at blogging as a method of content creation.
Blogging for business is not as difficult as you may think it is. There are several reasons to Blog.
First, and most important, it is the easiest way to keep fresh content on your website. Google and the search engines love new content. It shows them your site is current and active. Most business sites have the same content from when they were first launched years ago. A website that has not changed since 2001 is not good in the eyes of search engines, and will be ranked accordingly.
In other words, regular business blogging helps you rank in search engines and get found when people search for industry-specific products or services. Thus the blog enables you to attract organic traffic and familiarize people with your business. This is also critical to the SEO of your website. The more blog posts you publish, the more indexed pages you create for search engines to display in their results.
Blogging also helps you to:
• Build your brand
• Establish yourself as an authority in your industry
• Connect directly with customers and potential clients
• Provide value to your business and customer community
A Blog is not the only text specific content you can make available on your website. Longer-form content items like e-books, whitepapers, or research reports are also powerful ways to help more of the right people discover you online. Plus they offer the opportunity to capture prospect information if the content is linked to a downloaded application.
Finally, it is critical that your blog page is on your website, and not on a stand-alone blog service.